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District court stays case pending petition for writ certiorari to the United States Supreme Court
BlogPatent Lawyer Blog

After the Federal Circuit remanded the case to the district court, the defendant filed a motion to stay the case pending the United States Supreme Court's review of the petition for writ of certiorari. As explained by the district court, "[t]his case for patent infringement is back in this court on remand from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Promega Corp. v. Life Technologies Corp., 773 F.3d 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2014). The question before the court is whether the case should be stayed while defendants' petition for a writ of certiorari is pending before the Supreme Court."

Although the chance of the Supreme Court accepting the petition was very small, the district court believed that the stay was appropriate. "If the Supreme Court were to grant defendants' petition, it is possible that the Court's decision could negate any developments of the case in this court and require yet another round of proceedings. Particularly because the parties cannot even agree on the scope of the remand, it makes sense to wait a short time to allow the Supreme Court to render its decision to avoid the possibility of wasted effort."

The district court did acknowledge the chances of the Supreme Court accepting review was slim, but found that this was not a reason to deny the stay, particularly because of a dissent in the Federal Circuit. "Of course, the chances are slim that the Supreme Court will accept review of any particular case, including this one. However, the chances in this case may be higher than some other cases in light of the dissenting opinion in which Judge Probst argued that the majority was disregarding Supreme Court precedent on an issue of statutory interpretation. In any event, plaintiff does not identify any prejudice that it will suffer while waiting for the Supreme Court's decision, so I see no reason to proceed until the certiorari petition is resolved."

Accordingly, the district court granted the motion to stay pending review of the certiorari petition by the Supreme Court.

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